1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated systems for selecting and restocking stored articles and specifically to an automated system for filling prescriptions and restocking medicines in a pharmacy.
2. Description of Related Art
Many industries store products or parts in a storeroom or storage area and repeatedly select some of the stored items to fill orders or for other uses. Such items may range from small electronic components used by a manufacturer of electronic devices to automotive parts, which vary in size, used by service departments of automobile dealerships. Usually one or more people are employed to retrieve the requested items and to restock new and returned items. These individuals may also be required to confirm that the requested items are compatible with one another and with previously supplied items. If the supplied items are to be billed to a customer or charged to particular internal accounts, the list of items is first written by the requester, and rewritten or entered into a computer database by the storeroom attendant to create an invoice, supply list or other document. In some instances, further generations of the list are made by installers, users or billing clerks. Such methods have built-in opportunities for mistakes every time a list is rewritten and are less efficient than automated systems. Moreover, as labor costs rise and the size of inventory needed to be stored expands, the conventional storeroom and parts department become more and more expensive.
Blister packages are commonly used as containers for a wide variety of products. This type of package consists of a rectangular piece of cardboard on which the product is placed and a plastic blister which surrounds all exposed sides of the product and is affixed to the front face of the cardboard. Most blister cards have a hole for hanging the package on a storage rack. Blister packages are often used as containers for a single item that is used at one time. Single doses of medicine are individually packaged for hospital use on blister cards creating a unit dose package.
Currently, in large hospital environments, doctors visit patients in nursing modules and write out medication orders for each patient. Most patients are placed on medication which must be administered several times over a period of a day. Some patients are given several different medicines which are administered at different time intervals during the day. Patients may also request certain medications on an elective basis for disorders such as headaches. Furthermore, some medicines are taken more frequently than other medicines, and some medicines are prescribed more frequently. All of the prescribed medication for all of the patients are supplied by the hospital pharmacy in accordance with the doctor's orders.
Once an order is received by the pharmacy, it is checked by registered pharmacists and input into the pharmacy information system. The pharmacy information system combines this information with the patient's existing medication schedule and develops a patient medication profile. A list is generated for each patient which contains all the medications that must be given to that patient during each day or other selected time period. This information is sent to the pharmacy printer where a hard copy is generated. In most hospitals the drugs for a particular patient are hand-picked by either a pharmacist or a pharmacy technician and placed in the particular patient's designated box. A registered pharmacist must then check the accuracy of the patient order before it leaves the pharmacy. Individual patient boxes are then loaded into a medicine cart and delivered to the nursing unit.
Several companies have tried to automate this process through various approaches to the problem. Meditrol utilized a vending machine approach to dispense the unit dose medications. Each nursing unit must have its own stock of prescription drugs. Nurses key in a patient ID and the drugs for that patient are then dispensed from the vending machine. This system is very expensive because of the necessity of purchasing a machine for each nursing unit. Also, restocking each machine is a very time-consuming task. Implementation of this system requires a complete modification of the current drug dispensing process which many hospitals are reticent to undertake. Consequently, the Meditrol system provides no labor-saving advantages over the conventional manual approach. This system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,045 titled "Drug Dispensing Apparatus" and dated Nov. 11, 1975.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,468,110, assigned to the assignee hereof, discloses an "Automated System For Selecting Packages From A Storage Area." This system is particularly useful for filling patient medication orders in a hospital pharmacy. In this system unit dose packages are held on storage racks. Preferably, the storage racks contain a vertical array of storage rods, each storage rod having a unique x, y, z coordinate position. The items are arranged so that each storage rod contains like items. Additionally, a supply rack or a designated portion of the main storage rack is provided for receipt of new or returned items to be restocked. An automated picker selects individual unit dose packages from the storage rods as well as restocks the storage rack from replacement packages that have been placed in a supply rack. The automated picker includes a gripper assembly mounted on a transport vehicle which moves along a column and a track. The automated picker has a movable rod or other carrier for holding selected items, at least one vacuum head, and associated controls for gripping and moving selected items. To fill orders the picker selects the prescribed unit dose packages one at a time from the storage rods and deposits them in a patient box that has been placed on a conveyor by a technician or pharmacist. The contents of the patient box are checked and the box is then delivered to the nursing unit, typically in a nursing cart which contains patient boxes for all the patients in the nursing unit. In this system all packages are individually selected in the same manner.
More unit doses of some medications are prescribed for individual patients and many of those medicines are requested on a far more frequent basis than others. An automated pharmacy of the type described in the '110 patent would be more efficient if these medicines were dispensed into the patient boxes more rapidly than the picker operates. This is especially true in a hospital pharmacy where particular medications are frequently prescribed to a high percentage of patients. Thus, there is a need for a dispensing device that can rapidly dispense frequently prescribed unit dose packages into patient boxes. This device should be suitable for use in combination with the automated package selecting and storing system of the type described in the '110 patent. Preferably, the dispenser will handle blister packages of the type used for unit dose packs.